I. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to methods and systems for grouping and managing requests to move stock in a warehouse or other storage facilities. More particularly, the invention relates to methods and systems for grouping stock requests based on the attributes of those requests and then managing the release of the grouped requests for processing in the warehouse.
II. Background of the Invention
When a customer places an order to purchase an item, the order goes through various stages before the customer receives the purchased item. For instance, a supplier of the item may determine a shipping route and the means for shipment. The order may then be sent to a warehouse as a stock request so that the item can be collected, packed, and shipped to the customer.
During normal operations, the warehouse may receive many requests for different stock items each day. The items associated with each respective request may be located in different areas of the warehouse, and may require shipment to different destinations, as well as by different shipping priority classes. Typically, the requests to move stock within the warehouse are issued as transfer orders. A transfer order (or “TO”) is an instruction to move items from a source location (such as a source storage bin) to a destination location (such as a destination storage bin) within a warehouse complex. A TO may contain information included in the stock request, such as, but not limited to, the item and the quantity of the item to be moved, the source and destination locations, and shipping information. Upon receiving a TO, a warehouse worker will identify from the TO the items to be moved and determine where each is located in the warehouse. The worker may then go to each location to collect the ordered items. Once the items are collected, the worker then packs the items and ships them to the destination specified on the order.
This process can be very time-consuming. A warehouse can only fill a certain number of TOs each day since each worker would potentially be working on an order-by-order basis, and for each TO, on an item-by-item basis. Further, the process can cause high inefficiencies if the worker simply processes each TO serially. For instance, it would be inefficient for the worker to make repeated trips to the same warehouse area to retrieve an item as opposed to retrieving those items in just one trip to that area. This process may also cause congestion within a warehouse if multiple workers collect items from the same areas in the warehouse at the same time.
To manage the processing of TOs in a warehouse, a warehouse worker may manually group certain stock requests based on certain attributes of each request. For instance, the worker may manually group requests based on, for example, a shipping destination or item associated with each request. The manually created group of stock requests (sometimes referred to as a “wave”) may then be released to a warehouse worker as a TO for processing.
Such a process, however, can also be time-consuming and lead to errors. The worker, depending on how many requests are received each minute, hour, or day, would have to look at each request to decide how it should be grouped with the other requests based on the various request attributes. The worker can easily overlook one or more stock requests or attributes of the requests, and thus, may have to separately process a request that could have been more efficiently processed when grouped with other requests. The above process also leads to congestion in the warehouse since workers could be instructed to process two different groups of requests for items in the same area of the warehouse. Furthermore, this system becomes very cumbersome as the number of requests to be processed increases, or in cases where the items for each request are located in more than one warehouse.
Existing methods and systems for grouping stock requests also suffer from other drawbacks. For instance, such systems do not give a worker the capability to monitor the processing status of the grouped requests. For instance, if the worker subsequently decides not to process the grouped requests, existing systems do not allow the worker to efficiently cancel that processing instruction or to hold it for processing at a later time. Further, existing systems do not allow the worker to remove and add stock requests to a previously created group of requests or to provide an interface to manage the processing status of the group. In a busy delivery or supply chain environment, this can result in substantial delays and inefficiencies.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for improved systems and methods for grouping and managing stock requests in a warehouse environment.